Do Transitions get Easier?

I vividly remember the joy and excitement of my high school graduation in 2014. There was a sense of victory, for having slogged through IB exams (though scores were still pending), committed to a school whose name I could not pronounce (Bryn Mawr), and largely finished what I had set out to do. I was looking forward to traveling to Europe after five years of fundraising and planning with my Girl Scout Troop, and friends I had met on mission in Japan were slated to come to Hawaiʻi to stay with me.

For 17 years, I had been building a life for myself – Girl Scouts, Church, school, friends, family, doctors – and now, suddenly, all that was all…ending. Some of it would continue, albeit in a new form, but I was utterly daunted by the idea of leaving Hawaiʻi. I knew I needed an education I could not get at home, and that I had the privilege of being offered just that. I knew the Lord was calling me to the Mainland.

If she had thought about it, a younger Briana might have hoped that transitions would get easier with time. On the one hand, they have. In the intervening years, I have lived in dorms and apartments, on couches and in my friend’s aunt’s house. Beyond my permanent address at home, I have had addresses in three states and other three countries. From August 2019 – August 2020 alone, I had to live in five different places (and had to stay temporarily at 3 others in between) thanks to COVID. One of those (forced) moves was on only three days’ notice. So I have done a lot of moving and transitioning.

 17-year old Briana could not have handled that chaos, would not have known what to do and would not have had the network of people to help her get through so many transitions. So on the one hand, transitions have gotten easier logistically. Whether it’s moving, long-term travel, or short trips, I know how to lug my butt from A-to-B.

But in August of 2014, nearly 9 years ago, I was shaking with anxiety and totally ill-equipped for the change. I was not ready to say goodbye to Hawaiʻi – and at that point, I didn’t even really know how hard it would be. I didn’t know that the homesickness would never get better. I couldn’t really imagine just how hard the culture-shock would be. I didn’t know that starting over every time would get worse and worse because now there were more people to miss.

But the fact that these amazing opportunities are good gifts which I both want and am grateful for does not mean that there is no difficulty in seizing them.

Just because I feel like this is what God wants me to do doesn’t mean that obedience is always easy.

Even wonderful things can be hard.

Now I am getting ready to leave Bratislava, Slovakia, where I have spent most of June and July. I am getting ready to say goodbye to the friends and relationships here. I will say goodbye to the Carpathian mountains, to excellent public transportation, to the Danube River, and to some great communist era urban planning. I will say goodbye to my friends in Vienna, too, and to relative proximity to my old roommates from PTS (both in Germany, both of whom I got to see this summer). I will say goodbye to the person I came all this way to see.

So I can’t help but ask myself, why am I even doing this?

Why am I leaving?

Why transition again?

The answer, of course, is Ecclesiastes 3. ¹ For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven:

For me, there is a summertime to be in Slovakia with the warmth and security that it provides. But there is a time to return to Durham, too – to go back to Duke with the friends who are there, with the work waiting for me, with the calling I have.

I need to remind myself of all the reasons I went to Durham in the first place – and of the million reasons I have for returning. For the people I have met along the way, the books I’ve started reading but not finished, for the life I am building there. That I do have a calling, and obedience is always better (even when it’s harder).

I need to remind myself that, as little as three months ago, I was sick to my stomach over leaving Durham to go to Egypt (the first stop on my travels this summer).

Transitions are hard, and on the eve of this one back to the US I need to remember that there is a time for everything. The transition might not be pleasant, and the “time for everything” includes trials as well as lovely times.

I might not be 17 anymore, but transitions are no less scary now than they were then – even if I am much more capable, and ready for the challenge.